"It's been a busy year: Made a TV show. Made a movie. Made some comic books - and now making the TV show again, not sure how that happened ... well, no, I am sure: I'm looking at it right now. Never has the voice of the audience been so important."

There's always a huge audience for Joss Whedon at Comic-Con; it's not only quality of work he produces, or the sheer quantity of TV shows, films, comic books of both the spin-off and original character flavours. His panels are also just funny. And informal, well-informed and carry a sense of the give and take of the creator/fan relationship. So people come to them.

And so it was with his Friday appearance at this year's show. He came on, talked about upcoming projects for a while, including The Cabin in the Woods, new comics and, of course, the second season of Dollhouse.

But first, let's take a stroll through the banterish, admiration-fuelled fun:

What is Joss Whedon currently reading?

"Wired. That's pretty much what I read and what I have time for. I'm also reading Julie and Julia - I'm not taking much inspiration from that for the show."

Some questions on casting resulted the announcement that "I do believe we'll seeing a few episodes with a young ingénue called be Alexis Dennisof" (Wesley Wyndam-Pryce from Angel/Buffy, husband of Alyson Hannigan), which pleased everyone in the hall a great deal.

When asked about his process, he was more vague - he doesn't really have a process, he says, he just absorbs things and then regurgitates them in an order that tell a good story, and tell it well. Oh, and also, when it comes to Dollhouse:

"We have a dartboard - with various phrases: 'Gets wiped', 'Has sex', 'Gets killed' and we throw foam darts at it when we get stuck. I'm actually serious. It really helps."

Which, some would say, explains quite a lot.

Dollhouse is where the rest of the session went, and where I will concentrate my information from hereon.

Usually, at around this point in the Dollhouse posts, I would say as we're working on the UK schedule, if you have seen the rest to the end of season one - please don't spoil it for anyone else. But, just this once: IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN AT LEAST UP TO SEASON ONE EP.12 OF DOLLHOUSE PLEASE STOP READING - not because we don't like you, or because anyone would judge you, just because THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

After the introduction - and the minutes of wooting and clapping and squeeeeing from the stuffed-to-capacity ballroom - there was the premiere of Episode 13 (called Epitaph One) which won't air otherwise in the US although Britain should see it as part of the normal run. Well it was meant to be a world premiere; it was actually screened on demand in Singapore, so many people at the screening probably would have already torrented it.

The actual episode however? Well, that we'll review/discuss that as part of the usual run of Dollhouse episodes - but the important thing to know is that as an extra episode, it's completely derailing. It changed everything.

And it's very different. It straightforwardly addresses the moral implications of the dolls and their imprints; the consequences on all the characters, the levels of power and control. It's got a dark, post-apocalyptic setting, 10 years in the future from episode 12; great new characters; a goodly number of twists; very little Eliza Dushku (who is now producer, and has some other kind of live action film version of a video game in the works, by the way).

It was - in all, a whole different show. And one that made you realise that season one was all set up, and there's a lot more planned out.

But it's hard to see how they're going to pull back from that into a season two. And I wish someone would have directly asked that in the Q&A.

It's not like I was expecting any bad questions - or any negative opinions about Dollhouse - but some at least touched the touchy issues, as well as saying many things that critics and fan communities would expect to hear. So: they were expecting cancellation - joking or not, when Whedon started a sentence with "When we accidentally forgot to get cancelled," he sounded like he meant it. And episode 13 was going to be their answer to not being able to finish the story in fully, drawn out way.

But now they have more time to build on what they've made.

Whedon had some ideas. "When we accidentally forgot to get cancelled, we talked about it a lot - but bear in mind a lot of what you saw in Epitaph One was flashbacks and memories, and you can't always count on those, especially with dolls." Which sounds like a worryingly complex plan.

Basically, somehow, they have to create a season two that speaks both to the people that are watching purely on the basis of what happened in season one, and people who are intrigued to see how that will turn into the darker, more complex and dramatic events in episode 13. But finding a story and a line of continuity that will balance the two?

That's going to be very, very tough. I look forward to it enormously. Perhaps Whedon should add a few more labels to his Dollhouse dartboard: 'False memory', 'Fake Imprint' and 'Woke up and discovered it was all a dream'. Maybe?